Should a European USB device be expected to operate on a Linux
system in North America, and vice-versa? I have a USB->Serial
adapter made for Europe which doesn't work on my system here in
the USA.

The full story:

The European manufacturer of a 230V, 50Hz RS232 appliance (otherwise
equivalent to a 120V, 60Hz USA model) supplies a custom USB->Serial
adapter cable with their product. It appears to use a Prolific
chipset. Some non-North American users of my (FOSS) software have
reported problems with this particular adapter locking up after a few
minutes or hours of operation which disappeared after they replaced
the custom adapter with an ordinary retail USB->Serial adapter.

One European user of my software who has an available RS232 port
and _never used_ his custom adapter gave it to me to look at.
It doesn't work at all under either Fedora Core 3 or 6 on my (USA)
system, although other USB-Serial adapters I have with Prolific
chipsets do work.

I tried downloading the Windows XP driver from the manufacturer's
website and loading it on a Windows XP system but the adapter
doesn't work there either - there's no indication Windows even
knows anything has been plugged into the USB socket.

The simplest explanation is that this adapter is just defective,
but ...

Charles Sullivan wrote:
[color=blue]
> I hope this isn't too stupid a question.
>
> Should a European USB device be expected to operate on a Linux
> system in North America, and vice-versa? I have a USB->Serial
> adapter made for Europe which doesn't work on my system here in
> the USA.
>[/color]

They should work. Only exception are wireless adapters (TV, Wifi),
which must conform to a specific country and may not work somewhere
else.